Download a PDF of the exhibition catalogue - The Scottish Gallery

Peploe began to visit the south-west of Scotland during the First War no doubt with the encouragement of his friends
Jessie King and EA Taylor who had settled there in 1913. He came to paint but also to get fit; he was not to be deemed
fit for War service but was continuously expecting to be called up. There is no precise record of his visits and the dates
on the back of some of his panels may well have been written on some years later and are not entirely reliable. One
of his most productive locations was on the Solway Firth at Douglas Hall, which overlooks Sandyhills Bay and the land
inland towards Laggan Farm.
He worked exclusively at this time on panels for which he had a transportable painting box so that he could
walk over rough, farming terrain to find his subjects. Trees Douglas Hall, (New Acquisitions, The Scottish Gallery, 2008)
will belong to an earlier visit, perhaps of 1915 and is fauvist in character while work made on the next visit, most likely
in the summer of 1917, have a more lyrical, naturalistic quality. Cornfield, Douglas Hall and Laggan Farm Buildings, (both
Glasgow Museums) are typical. Peploe is now using a gesso ground and thinned paint, with some oil taken out with
blotting paper from which is derived a dry surface and an extraordinary almost luminous brightness.
Our picture entitled Douglas Hall is in fact Laggan Farm, seen from the back. The landowner was the Haslam
family, likely friends of Jessie King who would have welcomed the artist onto their property. Peploe is attracted to the
strong architectural lines of the house (he also enjoyed the stolid geometry of Kirkcudbright’s Tolbooth in several works
also belonging to 1917) and the light on the whitewashed facade is captured in a white as brilliant as any he painted.
At this moment he seems closer to Paul Cézanne than at any other; the attraction to great trees, the rusticity of his
subject choices and analysis of form all owe a debt to the master of Aix. But as always with Peploe the sheer virtuosity
of painting and originality of his colour transcend any influences.
68